Chapter Text
Two weeks alone with a germ-festooned five-year-old who hadn’t quite mastered coughing into her elbow was enough to wreck even the most fastidious of persons—and Rey wasn’t remotely in the running for that particular title.
The door to the den was closed most of the way, but the dulcet sounds of Frozen—and her daughter’s far less tuneful croak—still found their way through the slight crack to reverberate momentarily in the stale sickbed air still permeating their Upper West Side penthouse. At a particularly dissonant harmony, Rey winced. Either Stella had inherited Rey’s tendency to go flat and stay flat—or this was the final vestiges of the flu battling out its last gasp.
Either way, she was really over Elsa’s plight. Rey needed to introduce this child to KPop Demon Hunters or Mamma Mia or…anything else. Anything at all. Maybe she could coax Stella into watching a few episodes of Bluey while Rey tackled the laundry.
And possibly vacuumed? She was starting to forget the color of the rug that was buried somewhere under the blanket forts and crumpled tissues littered all over the living room.
Ben was coming home tomorrow and she’d like to welcome him back into an environment that didn’t resemble a construction zone. Or a lab experiment gone awry.
She might even do something really whimsical, like shower.
Leaning one elbow on the celadon quartz countertops Ben had conceded to in Rey’s campaign to introduce color into his black-and-white apartment, she reached for her phone right as it lit up with an incoming text.
Tapping her phone absently with the chipped remnants of last month’s manicure, Rey stared out the window and down at the miniature people crowding the winding paths of the park below. This changed things. As much of a (beloved) irritant as Poe could be, she was also sure he was correct. He knew Ben down to his bones. And so did she. If her husband needed fucking, she had a tried and true solution.
Rey took another look around the apartment and at her faint reflection in the window. She no longer had time for laundry. She had time for an emergency cleaner, a rushed visit to Leia and Han’s, and, if luck was on her side, an appointment with her waxer.
“Stella, my love, do you want to have a sleepover with Grandma and Grandpa?”
And a stop at La Perla. La Perla was a must.